In this article, I will show you how to install macOS Sierra on Lenovo IdeaPad U330/U430/U530 using Clover UEFI. The complete guide of macOS Sierra 10.12 on Lenovo IdeaPad U430 laptop. This method is using the clover EFI and the guide below is experienced on Lenovo Y50-70. The purpose of this guide is to provide a step-by-step exclusive guide to install macOS Sierra on Lenovo IdeaPad U330/U430/U530. It’s for macOS Sierra or El Capitan, it;s works for both because there aren’t many differences. But still, there are some unsolved problems.

Remember: This particular guide is for Lenovo IdeaPad U430 but it works for U330 and U530 also, because the drivers are pretty the same and work on all. This guide is named for macOS Sierra but it also works great for Mac OS X El Capitan.

Creating USB Installer

Firstly, You need to create bootable USB installer for macOS Sierra to install it on the Lenovo laptop. The process of creating bootable USB installer for macOS Sierra or El Capitan is a little bit long, so due to this, we have managed in separate articles to create bootable USB. Now all you have to do is, follow one of the way below to create bootable USB installer for macOS Sierra.

Important Note: After creating USB Installer via unibeast then you need to copy ApplePS2SmartTouch kext(TouchPad), VoodooPs2Controller kext (Keyboard) and FakeSMC kext to the USB Installer. First Mount the EFI partition of USB via Clover configurator then copy and paste it EFI > Clover > Kexts > other. When you boot from USB then your touchpad and keyboard will work, otherwise, you need an external mouse & keyboard to complete the installation Process.

Copy the kext to USB Installer

Free Space for macOS 10.12

So before getting started you need at least 20 GB empty partition disk space to install macOS Sierra on that volume. If you have already then made you sure you have copied or moved your data before continuing to install macOS on that volume drive because it will clean and disappeared from your Windows. So in short, I want to say that you need a free empty partition or vacant HDD or SSD to install macOS Sierra on it. If don’t own any of them then create an empty partition drive by the article below or buy an HDD or SSD right now.

UEFI BIOS Settings

After create free disk space for macOS Sierra and bootable USB installer. First, you have to setup parts of your computer BIOS, this will let your PC to boot into USB installer. It’s only for Lenovo laptops and it may or may not work for any other laptop.

#3. Then after that make you sure that you applied the following settings to BIOS and at the end exit & save changes.

– Secure Boot is disabled

– USB deep sleep is disabled

– Set the SATA Controller Mode to AHCI

Sata Controller

– USB Boot is Enabled

– UEFIBoot is enabled

– Enable Legacy Boot but set the Boot Priority to UEFI first

Boot Priority

Boot with Bootable USB Installer

Turn on your laptop and If your system didn’t boot automatically then go to Boot Manger and select the Bootable USB Installer Manually.

EFI USB Device

After you get into Clover Menu then if the USB installer is for El Capitan or Sierra, make you sure you boot with (nv_disable=1) boot flag then from Clover boot menu, select the bootable USB Installer (External) and hit enter.

Boot into USB Installer

Installing macOS Sierra

#1. Select your Language for macOS Sierra and click on the Arrow button to go forward.

Choose your Language

#2. To partition the Disk for Mac OS. Now click on Utilities > Disk Utility.

Go to Disk Utility

#3. Now select your free hard disk drive and click on Erase tab. Be sure to select a free empty partition the partition is going to be clean and formatted for macOS Sierra.

#4. Name the disk then choose the format to “OS X Extended (Journaled) “ and click on Erase button. If you are partition the entire hard disk then be sure to select the Schema to “GUID Partition Map”. Then your hard disk or drive will be cleaned and partition to OS X Extended Journaled.

Erase to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

#5. Make yourself sure that you get the message that erasing disk process completed successfully. Click Done and close disk utility. If you faced any kind of errors then I highly recommend you to visit the link below.

#7. Now click Continue then click Agree the I have read and agreed to the terms of software license agreement.

Agree the Terms

#8. On the Install macOS page, select the partition that you created for macOS Sierra while partitioning for macOS and finally click Continue.

Install macOS Sierra on Drive

#9. Now wait for USB Installer to Install macOS Sierra from it to the disk that you selected. It will take some time to complete, depend on your system. After it is completed, then it will restarts after 10 seconds automatically.

Installing macOS on Drive

When your computer rebooted then it must automatic take you to USB installer clover menu. If no then boot yourself from Boot manager the EFI USB installer. After that on the clover menu, don’t make any changes because it will automatically boot into the disk that Mac OS is newly installed. If no then select HFS disk icon that named your Mac HD and hit enter from your keyboard.

Boot into Mac OS Drive

Performing a clean Installation

In the previous steps, if you have installed macOS Sierra from the USB Installer to the partition that you created for macOS Sierra 10.12, then after booting from that partition that macOS Sierra is installed on it. Here it’s time to setup and performing a clean installation of macOS Sierra. Well, we have another article also for further information with the shots visit the link below to perform a clean installation of macOS Sierra or keep following this article below.

#3. Now select your method to transfer information to this mac and click on Continue.

#4.Enable location services and click on Continue.

#5. In this step, you have to Sign in with your Apple ID. If you don’t have, then create a free Apple ID “how to create an Apple ID on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch”. If you don’t want to sign in with Apple ID or don’t want to create Apple ID, then Choose Don’t Sign in and click on Continue.

#6. Agree tothe Terms and Conditions.

#7. Fill out the Full name, Account name, Password, Hint and check the box of Set time zone based on Current location. Finally click on Continue to create your user account for macOS Sierra, that will be installed on your PC.

Create a Computer Account

#8. Select the options for Diagnostics & Usage and click on Continue.

#9. Wait a little while to Setting Up Your Mac. It will run on the desktop of macOS Sierra.

Setting Up your Mac

#10. After performing a clean installation and Set upping your macOS Sierra on PC then you should see your final result that, macOS Sierra has successfully installed on PC.

macOS Sierra Installed

Post Installation

Now after installing macOS Sierra on your Lenovo IdeaPad, this part is very tricky and important. Because you might face some problems after the installation, like sound and Wi-Fi isn’t working, no internet connection and the most important that you are unable to boot into macOS Sierra without the USB Installer then you need a post installation.

Installing Edimax Driver (Wi-Fi Solution)

After installing macOS Sierra 10.12 on your laptop then you may have big problem with Wi-Fi because it disappeared completely from the settings. So you can connect to the internet via cable or a wifi dongle, like Edimax EW-7811un. So if you have the already the item to install the driver, download the installer files from the like below then open it and install it by clicking continue a couple of times and type your password and hit enter to confirm installation process.

Installing bootloader

This step is recommended to do before anything else because later the kext have to save here. Also if you don’t do this, you won’t be able to boot into macOS Sierra by the disk itself. For booting in maOS Sierra still, you will need to use the USB installer, though you aren’t using it install macOS Sierra. So it one of the most important and easy tasks that you have to do here.

#3. One the Installation type page, make you sure you have you have selected the right disk to install the bootloader on it. After that click Customize.

Installation Type

#4. Make you sure the following options are check marked.

– Install for UEFI booting only

– Install Clover in the ESP

– Dirvers64UEFI > OsxAptioFixDrv-64

Install Custom Packages

#5. Now this time Download and copy HFSPlus.efi to EFI > Clover > drivers64UEFI folder, finally click authenticate and enter your Password. Make you sure that you have mounted the EFI partition of the disk which bootloader is installed on it.

Place HFSPlus.efi

Installing & Fixing All other tasks

Now here, I will show you how to install and fix all other drives, remember the commands below are entered in the terminal and works great. All you have to do is copy and paste this commands in your terminal.

#1. Firstly, to make all these things happen we need the developer tools, so open terminal and type the following Command.

git

Install Developer Tools

#2. After the developer tool is installed then run the commands below in the terminal to download or copy all the important file from GitHub to your mac drive.

#3. Now this time paste the commands below to your terminal to download and install the required kext and drivers on your laptop.

cd ~/Projects/u430.git ./download.sh ./install_downloads.sh

#4. After running the above commands a restart is not bad to understand what works and not.

#5. To finish the setup, we need a correctly patched DSDT/SSDT, these patches are created specially for this kind of laptops. So If you return from a restart, copy & paste the following commands into your terminal. If no then same but without first line.

cd ~/Projects/u430.git make make install

Power Management

For power management use the ssdtPRgen.sh script by Pike R. Instructions for using it are provided in the README. When you run the commands below then it will place the generated SSDT.aml to /EFI/Clover/ACPI/patched/SSDT.aml, it’s current instructions at the README. So you need to run the following commands.

#1. Open terminal then copy & paste this command, it will download the file into your Lenovo laptop.

#2. So now the files should be downloaded, run the command below to apply it to your laptop.

./ssdtPRGen.sh

#3. After running the command above then it will ask if you want to copy to /Extra? So respond with “n” to cancel the operation. Same respond “n” for opening ssdt.dsl.

#4. You can find the result at ~/Library/ssdtPRgen/SSDT.aml now copy then the same ssdt.aml file and paste it on /EFI/Clover/ACPI/patched/SSDT.aml. You can do it graphically if you wish but also run the command below to finish it in a moment.

Place the Config.plist

If you have successfully completed the steps above, so now you are good to go with the following steps. Because if you place this config.plist file into your UEFI bootloader and there are not the files that you use above, it can’t work properly then your laptop might face some terrible issues.

#1. Firstly, you have to mount the EFI partition of your laptop, where the Clover files are placed. To mount EFI you can use clover configurator or the command below.

cd ~/Projects/u430.gitsudo ./mount_efi.sh /

#2. Now you need to copy the config.plist file from /Projects/u430.git then paste/replace it with /EFI/EFI/Clover/config.plist. So run the command below to copy with terminal.

Troubleshooting

After updating your Hackintosh then the settings and patches might lose the correct configuration and the laptop might stop working properly. So after the updates you need to fix it manually.

Fixing Sound & Display

If you have applied all the settings above then you sound isn’t working then you need to follow this the steps below. This happens after installing new/updated kexts or after the initial installation, you may lose audio, So need to bring it back to the cache.

#1. Make you sure you have installed then audio kext and patches for your laptop. After that restart your laptop and on the clover, menu hit space bar then boot with without caches. Get help to from here to boot without caches.

About The Author

I am the CEO of wikigain.com and a network instructor. Here is my online pictorial notebook. I would like to write and share my experience through this website for computer enthusiasts, how to guides and technology geeks.

Hi, thanks very much for your kindness in helping me with this. I have a Lenovo u330 with only one hard drive. Once I boot from the USB I get to the install screen and I can partition and format the hard drive. Then I get the language selection screen. But when I hit the arrow it just says OS X is already installed. I think it is trying to load OS X on the USB drive instead of the hard drive. But I don’t know how to tell it where to install OS X. I don’t the the Clover boot screen

Mike Sierra

I am not sure about your system, but you can give a try. It’s free. If didn’t worked then check out these guide and follow all the steps especially creating USB Installer because there are many ways.http://www.wikigain.com/install-macos-sierra-pc/

Stef

Stef

I had Win10 installed and tried installing MacOS onto second partition of the same disk but couldnt get Clover to boot. I red somewhere that I need to install MacOS first and then Windows. Do you have guide for that?